Heart of Gold Part 31

"Also the Fairview Club, to which Dr. Race belongs, wants them to be married at the Club-house. O, it's great to be popular!"

"Why don't they simplify matters by having a church wedding?" asked Miss Kellogg, much interested.

"Ha--ha--ha!" laughed her three companions. "That's where the joke comes. They belong to different churches, and are both intimate friends of their pastors' families."

"Well, that does complicate matters, doesn't it?" said the newcomer musingly. "She is surely in a dilemma, isn't she?"

"Don't you agree with me that she would better patronize a justice of the peace?" asked Miss Swift.

"_I_ don't," replied a decided voice just behind them, and the quartette jumped nervously at the unexpected sound, for not one of them was aware of the hidden listener.

"You don't what?" they gasped, as the curly brown head came into view from the deep recess.

"I don't think she ought to patternize the justice of the p'lice,"

replied Peace, limping over to the long table where they were all at work, "I'd just be married here at the hospital and fool 'em all."

"At the hospital!" echoed Miss Keith.

"What utter nonsense!" flashed Miss Swift.

"I think it is a novel idea," put in the new nurse decidedly.

"And why not?" asked Miss Gerald, after her first gasp of surprise. "Who would have a better right? Helen Wayne graduated from this inst.i.tution, and Harvey Race was house doctor for a long time."

"But whoever heard of a _wedding_ in a _hospital_?" exclaimed Miss Swift sarcastically. "It is utterly ridiculous."

"The ceremony could take place in that bay window at the end of the hall," planned Miss Kellogg, ignoring the att.i.tude of her sister nurse.

"It would make a lovely archway."

"And the roses are just at their best now," added Miss Gerald. "That is her favorite flower."

"Miss Foster is a musician, isn't she?" asked Miss Keith, entering into their plans with spirit. "We could get her to play the wedding march."

"On what?" inquired the dissenting member of the party. "Our lovely little baby organ which has an incurable case of asthma? Or the grand piano which we don't possess?"

"The grand piano, by all means," replied Miss Keith, nettled by her companion's words.

"Perhaps the hospital's fairy G.o.dmother will turn up with a piano for the occasion," suggested the gentle little peacemaker nurse. "We certainly need a decent instrument badly enough."

"Maybe we could hire one for just that night," Peace excitedly proposed.

"We did that in Parker. Our school didn't own a piano, so we hired one when we needed it."

"You make me laugh," jeered Miss Swift. "You talk as if it were all settled. Do you suppose for one moment that the Hospital Board would listen to such a thing?"

"They meet today,--we'll ask them," quietly answered Miss Gerald.

"And supposing they _should_ consent to such a preposterous scheme, do you think the doctors would allow their patients to be excited and disturbed over having such an event in this building?"

"It would be the best kind of a tonic for every soul under this roof.

'All the world loves a lover,' you know."

An audible sniff was the only reply their disgruntled comrade made; but at that moment Dr. Race himself entered the corridor and beckoned to Miss Gerald. So the quartette dispersed to take up other duties.

Peace, her desire for letter writing forgotten, wandered forlornly away to her room to await Gail's return, mentally chiding herself that she had allowed the big sister to go motoring without her. "I could have gone as well as not; but they prob'ly wouldn't have driven very far if I had; while as 'tis, they'll likely stay till dark."

She curled up in a comfortable bunch on the couch, propped her head against the window sash and fell to daydreaming, until the big eyes grew heavy with sleep, and she drifted away to the Land of Nod, where she dreamed that her beloved Miss Wayne was married to the man of her choice by a blue-coated policeman, on the flat roof of the Martindale fire-house, while all the doctors and nurses and sick folks from Danbury Hospital marched around and around in procession, vainly seeking some means of mounting to the room also.

Then suddenly the small sleeper was aroused by feeling a pair of strong arms encircling her and lifting her into somebody's capacious lap.

"You precious child!" she heard a familiar voice saying, and a warm kiss was pressed upon her forehead.

Her eyes flew quickly open, as she cried, "O, I know who you are--Miss Wayne! Are--are you married yet?"

"No, goosie. Did you suppose I could get married without having _you_ there, too? You're _almost_ as important as the bridegroom."

"Well, I dreamed you were, but I'm glad to hear it isn't so. Have you decided who you're going to hurt yet?"

"Whom I am going to hurt?" echoed Miss Wayne in surprise. "I _hope_ I'm not going to hurt anyone. That isn't my business."

"Miss Gerald said so many folks wanted you to be married at their house that you were bound to hurt someone's feelings no matter what you did."

"O, but you fixed that for me beautifully, Peace Greenfield!" and she kissed the white forehead again.

"Me! How?"

"I'm going to be married here at the hospital. The Board invited me to!

What do you think of that? Surely everyone ought to be satisfied with that arrangement."

"O, goody!" Peace clapped her hands gleefully. "I was afraid the doctors wouldn't let you. Miss Swift said they wouldn't."

"Miss Swift--oh, you mustn't remember anything she says,--poor girl."

"Well, I won't, but I guess she wanted your doctor herself--"

"Hush, childie. Don't say such things. I couldn't help it. I didn't _try_ to make him love me."

"I'm glad he had some sense. _I_ had picked out Dr. d.i.c.k for you, but my own sister Gail got him; so it's all right. I like Dr. Race next best.

When are you going to be married?"

"Next week Wednesday."

"So soon? Why, I thought it took heaps of time to get ready for a marriage,--making clothes, and baking the cake and--and all such things as that."

"I have taken heaps of time," smiled the woman whimsically.

"Why, I didn't know that. When did you get time? You have always been busy nursing since I knew you."

"Years and years ago, when I was a little child, my father made me a beautiful cedar chest, and on every birthday mother laid away some pillow slips or linen sheets, or a piece of silverware. When I grew older, I made some quilts and hemmed towels and napkins by the dozen, embroidered sofa-cus.h.i.+ons and doilies, and even fas.h.i.+oned some window draperies for the 'den' of my house to be. Only my own clothes remained undone when we decided to go hand in hand the rest of the way through life; and much of that work a dressmaker has done, because I have had neither time nor talent."